John Hurrell – 9 April, 2020

Trish Clark’s brand new exhibiting space in Arch Hill is the old Hopkinson Mossman venue, but dramatically expanded to include part of the old adjacent apartment that Sarah Hopkinson used to live in. This gallery is much bigger than the site was previously, with wider entrances for the rooms, more space for stock presentation, and now a small shop and reference library as well. It is a knock-out art display showroom.

Of the four artists in the first show, three are abstract painters and one a documentary photographer. An odd uneasy combination.

Amanda Gruenwald‘s four moderately sized canvases of thin poured paint and smoky atmospheric blobs allude to (via florid saturated hues) rural landscapes, but with belching (pollutant?) smoke. The transparent but grainy forms sit uneasily within her stretcher edges, interspersed with occasional meandering thick arabesques of white that suggest riverbeds.

One work different from the others is the unnerving Cardinal Green, where the hill forms also appear to be a giant pink head, in profile with eye, nose, gulping mouth and chin. It is strangely compelling—and very subtle—with the light traversing the cheek.

Gruenwald’s compositions usually have none of the taut tensions that characterise the paintings of Brendon Leung who appears to be the opposite in sensibility. She likes hovering blurry rotund forms, he straight narrow rectangles and sharp-edged vertical slivers that are anchored firmly to the picture plane, accompanied by moody tonal contrasts. Leung’s small Untitled 102, is one of highlights of the show; a gloriously intriguing, precise, composition.

Eemyun Kang‘s loosely organic painted forms seem to be a wild synthesis of Frances Hodgkins, Tim McGuire and Ken Kiff. Like Gruenwald she is often attracted to hot colours and associative ambiguity, but via scattered brushmarks also bearing fragments of narrative components or symbolism. Floating with Its Wings is particularly successful with its energetic tactility and piecemeal botanical references.

Chris Corson-Scott is more known for his large photographs of historically significant decaying buildings or ecologically-troubled landscapes than portraits, but here he presents eleven comparatively small images of politically-focussed individuals united in their occupation of Ihumātao. These portraits I suspect are more interesting as a statement of Corson-Scott’s solidarity than as visual records. Perhaps in ten years that statement will be disputed—due to each decade having (for example) its own particular conventions of clothing, haircuts and tattoos.

Corson-Scott’s Scientists Performing Autopsies on Some of the 300 Pilot Whales that Beached and Died, Farewell Spit, Golden Bay (2017) is also displayed. At this time, a shrewd (grim) multileveled inclusion.

John Hurrell

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